


something to hold onto

by whisperlings



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Age Play, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-22 21:51:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whisperlings/pseuds/whisperlings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles had done what he'd needed to, what they'd <em>all</em> done for their parents.</p>
<p>But it wasn't enough to keep his father completely safe, and all he wants now is to go back, find that easier time when all he'd had to worry about was asking his mommy to patch up his toy bunny again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“My mom kept some of my baby things, and I, after she…”

He doesn't know how to explain it. Derek only blinks and picks up the soft letter block that Stiles had thrown in his direction when he’d opened the teenager’s bedroom door.

“I really need to… fix that lock.” Stiles is dumbfounded, rubbing the palm of his right hand against the back of his neck. Not even _Scott_ knew about this, never really thought it was his best friend’s business, even if they were… but he probably already knew, at least since he’d gotten so attuned to his werewolf side. At least, if he did, he had the decency not to mention it until, or if, Stiles wanted to bring it up himself.

But maybe this is better; Derek is already sitting down beside him, and then he drops the block into Stiles’ half open left hand.

“Your dad’s going to be okay, Stiles,” Derek says, but something’s off about his voice, something missing. He knows Scott’s doing all he can when he can to help the Sheriff’s healing process, but – 

His words crack into pieces as they fall from his lips, “I can’t lose _him_ , too.”

"You're not going to, Stiles." 

But it's hard to believe, even with Jennifer... Julia, the Darach, whatever she really was, dead. And he still hates Derek for nearly staying right by her side until she left him on the elevator floor, left him for Stiles to find, for Stiles to bring him back to consciousness, for Stiles...

For Stiles.

He grips the soft block even tighter until the image of his father's barely breathing body comes to the surface again, and he throws the thing at Derek's face. And Derek just takes it, he takes it and stands up and offers his other hand to Stiles. Still. He doesn't know what to do - he wants to swat Derek's palm away, he wants to push Derek away, he wants to grab hold of his hand and just, just let go, let it all...

Instead he glances up at Derek's face, through the man's worn eyes, and then surrenders to the pressure behind his eyes, the tears, the slight sting as they've built up and up. He hides his head between his knees as he curls up in on himself, thighs to chest and wondering when, when it's all going to tip over, when he's going to fall and not know how to get up again.

He  _needs._

He doesn't know how to express it, though, so he settles on whimpers, fingers tapping against his jeans out of ryhthm, reaching through to his skin, to the muscles and the bones and the intrinsic burning ache he can't rid himself of. It grows into a keening, and that's when he's gripped tight and lifted into Derek's arms, and Derek's acting wholly unlike himself, unlike the sour wolf he used to... but who did he used to be? He can't think right, can't...

"Stiles," Derek says, and his voice is still off, but it's different this time. He sits Stiles down on his bed, laying him back against both his pillows propped against each other. 

"Stiles. Tell me what you want... tell me. Please, I - "

"Cora's already gone, isn't she?"

Derek wraps a piece of Stiles' cover in his fists, and even without any werewolf senses, Stiles knows he's hit something, sees the way Derek's chest rises and falls deeper. He works to reword himself, backspace, get Derek to go back to... go back. Just, just  _go back._ He holds his breath for a few seconds, counting, and then evens them out, wondering where his bunny was, retreating, wanting,  _needing._

"I wan' Loppy, Derek," he says, his voice tired but honest and soft. He's too exhausted to play, to beat around the metaphorical bush, to even... if Derek had minded, had been repulsed, wouldn't he have left already? 

Derek's hands loosen on the fabric, "Loppy?" 

"My baby bunny toy. Mommy gave 'im to me."

Something in Derek's face relaxes, his shoulders losing just a bit of the tension weighing them down, and a shadow of a smile crosses his lips. Stiles isn't sure how to process it, this change in a man who had once craved power more than anything. But he notices while Derek searches for the limp and old (but Real) stuffed animal, that this is much better than before. He'd always liked Derek, but this was... this was nice.

"Is this...?" Derek holds Loppy up, and Stiles grins, nodding his head. "Yeah... yeah, gotta be." He brings the bunny over, a muted gray color with several sewed on patches and one button eye. It was, honestly, more than just a little bit beat up. But Stiles loves him all the same, just as when he first got him a few years before his mother had fallen ill. Back in the best days, when nothing was troublesome, nothing was anywhere _near_  life-threatening and too difficult for him to handle all on his own. This... Loppy,and a few other treasures he'd kept hidden away, embarrassed and ashamed but also happy, content, safe. They'd always helped when things got too black, edging towards the void.

For now he is too far back, too little, to feel embarrassed or ashamed. He grabs up Loppy and cuddles him close to his chest, turning over on his side and curling his legs up near his torso. Even has the desire to... but no. He isn't  _there_ yet. He looks at his half formed fist, thumb sticking out, and squeezes his eyes shut, putting the free hand in a pocket instead.

He has Loppy.

And Derek.

But why is Derek here again? He opens his eyes, finding Derek still sitting on the edge of his bed, looking around his room. He turns his attention to Stiles, though, and  _god_ is Stiles thankful for those keen werewolf senses again. 

"Why did you come?"

"I..." Derek starts, but then his phone vibrates. He pulls it out of his pocket and looks at the text, then back at Stiles.

"Scott asked me to check in on you, because you weren't at the..." His voice trails off, but his gesturing hands and diverting eyes finish his sentence for him.

"Oh. I, well, he... he knows why. Dad... I just... I was there when..." his breathing starts to quicken, growing shallow, the world around his vision blurring once more, tears pricking at the edge of his eyelids, "I don't want to be there _again_ , Derek! Not this time! Not, not - " he sits up and with Loppy falling to his lap, Stiles clutches his face with his hands, rocking back and forth, trying not to _think._ Not to think  _at all._

_"Stiles, Stiles, oh god."_

_He hardly hears Derek. He's back at the hospital, eight years old, taken from his mother's room into the waiting area after, after... He sees his father coming in, seeing him, hearing it. He hadn't been there, hadn't watched her wither away right in front of his eyes. Shouldn't have been there, shouldn't have... was. Did. Why is it all so clear now, not a wisp of a memory, but moving pictures, images seamlessly flowing together?_

_Somewhere he feels Derek holding him, quieting him, shushing, dragging him back to the present into sleep._

_Back into the tub where he'd died for his father to live._

_"He has to..."_  


	2. Chapter 2

"I never meant to worry him."

Scott threads his fingers together, "He knows that, I'm sure, Sheriff."

**Derek 9:24pm:**  
 _He's sleeping now.  
I'll tell him the news when he wakes up._

* * *

He isn't quite sure what to think of it, still. Stiles is, and always has been, the goofiest of the Beacon Hills teenagers. Also, the most idiotic and dumb and asinine and...

Oh, fuck it.

Stiles has always reminded him of how great it could be to be wholly human, even if he can never admit it. Ever. Of course, the kid has had some shitty negatives in his seventeen years - one of them being how he hasn't even had the chance to have a seventeenth birthday party yet (which is, admittedly, one of the more normal downsides to his life) - but for the most part, he's still really damn optimistic, cracking out sarcasm and lightening things up, balancing out his quiet intelligence. Sort of like Scott, but different. They both bring a different kind of light to his life.

Derek feels the corner of his mouth lift in some kind of smirking smile as he lets his attention drift outside of Stiles' room, past the window overlooking the couple of pine trees several feet away. But it's there where he looks even further and remembers, remembers when before the fire, before Paige, how he would take Cora out to the woods around their home and just simply play around, enjoy having a near free roam of a few acres. And then they'd either have their meal out in the woods or they'd go back home to eat with the family.

Now all he has is Peter, again.

He turns back to Stiles and rearranges Loppy so he's more secure in the teenager's arms.

* * *

"Uh... hey, um, hey, Stiles!"

He did not expect this.

Stiles is... there is no delicate way to put it; he's wetting his sheets. He goes to place his hands on Stiles' shoulders, about ready to shake him to get him to wake up, but then recalls when one of his siblings had used to do the same thing. It hadn't been recommended to wake him up before he'd finished. 

Stiles wakes up on his own when it's been ten minutes past.

* * *

Damp. Settling. He ignores it at first, thinking it's all part of the dream he'd been in, but then he realizes he's thinking about the dream in past tense.

Not good. And then he remembers that Derek's here.

Doubly not good.

 _"Stiles... I can hear your heartbeat."_ It's a whisper, but he can still hear it. And Derek's right, he can surely tell the difference between a sleeping heartbeat and an awake one.  _"It's okay."_

Why is Derek's voice so... unnaturally gentle? Maybe he's still dreaming. Maybe it was all a dream, back and back and back to even that alpha pack mostly from hell and maybe even farther down into its depths. Maybe Derek's a dream. But the wet feeling isn't doing anything but cooling. He's forced fully awake just because he doesn't want it to get any more uncomfortable. And he feels shame wash over him, seventeen years of it bundled.

His head's instinctually bowed, even though his father hadn't found wet sheets in several years. But this isn't his dad, it's Derek, and Derek is taking hold of his chin and making him look up at him.

"Change your jeans and whatever else, I'll get the sheets."

"Why are you - ?"

"My younger brother."

He doesn't say anything more.

When Stiles is changed he looks himself in the mirror and splashes a handful of cold sink water on his face. Without drying it off, he finds Derek back in his room and holding Loppy. He tosses the stuffed rabbit to Stiles and he catches it.

"Knew you would," Derek says.

"What?"

"I'm not an idiot. I know you care about it, even as you're trying to erase everything that happened before you fell asleep."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

Derek shrugs and pats his cellphone beside him, "I need to tell you something else, anyway. Scott texted me while you were out - " But he doesn't finish because Stiles rushes to the bed and opens Scott's text before he can explain it all.

**Scott 9:19pm:**  
 _The Sheriff woke up._  
 _He's going to be okay._

He feels the tears on his cheeks before he realizes he's also smiling, grinning like the best thing in the world's just happened (which, in his reality, it is The Best Thing In The World right now), and the phone's back in Derek's hands after some point, apparently, that Stiles had dropped it.

"You should've woken me up, Derek! This is... fuck, this is  _amazing_ beyond amazing!"

"Did you look at both texts?"

"Uh... there's another?"

"Yes, you idiot."

He regrets calling Stiles that around three seconds later.

* * *

How in the  _world_ he was supposed to calm down a hysterical seventeen-year old again was completely  _beyond_ his comprehension. Derek had tried the usual things that he could remember from when he used to be more touchy-feely, because God if he didn't want to shut Stiles the fuck up. 

(And, not that he'll say it, he hates seeing the kid like this.)

He thinks back to the soft letter block and Loppy. He'd already given the bunny to him, which thankfully helped some, but he still isn't good enough to go back to the hospital to see his father and Scott. Stiles isn't in that right  _state of mind._ Instead, he's somewhere between, if Derek had to estimate, two and four years old mentally. Maybe younger in some ways.

Derek is not great with children.

But, then again, Stiles isn't an actual two year old. He wracks his brain for anything, anything to help get Stiles back, something to soothe him, something to pacify - that's it. Pacify. Remembers that flash of a moment when Stiles had looked like he was about to suck his thumb, and when he glances over at the teen again, he notices that both his hands are too busy holding onto his stuffed rabbit.

...What are the chances that he has an  _actual_ pacifier, or anything like it? He sorts through various memories of Stiles until he gets back to the time he'd gone with Scott and Stiles to a park, God knows why he did but they'd wanted to "talk" somewhere that wasn't the burned ruins of the Hale house - and of course, Stiles had wanted to get on the damned swings and nearly make himself throw up everything he'd ate that day by acting like a lunatic. And that'd been when Stiles had pointed out a couple little kids, a baby, remarking how they had no cares at all in the entire world,  
  
 _"Except eating, shitting, and sleeping, y'know? Everything's taken care of for them,"_   _he'd said._

All he can do is ask.

With a hand resting on Stiles' shoulder, he finds out that, "Yeah, yeah... in that drawer, Derek." 

* * *

He points, glad that Derek asked. Wasn't sure if he had the strength himself to get over there, wasn't... wasn't sure. Isn't. Of anything, really. His dad's gonna be okay, he is, but... no. It all depends on the physical therapy, the...  _why was his dad the first?_ First taken, first nearly ritually sacrificed. He doesn't want to think, doesn't want to remember finding the nemeton, finding them.

"Stiles."

He doesn't take the time to process what this new knowledge means between him and Derek, why in the hell Derek is even doing this, why, why,  _why._ Still not in that right state to worry about something like... this. Knows he should just stop it all, back away and say  _this isn't me, you know? I don't know why that's there, don't know why._   _Why would I have a pacifier?_ But he knows why. Knows perfectly well the effect such little things have on his mind.

So he just takes it from Derek and places it between his lips, breathing through his nose while some kind of natural instinct moves in. It's a comfort that comes from the simple motions, something that takes him away from the present.

It's calming.

More than anything now, he wants to see his dad.

* * *

The hospital's not much better since the storm, but it's getting there, and Melissa's back at work with only minor injuries that she's able to work through. Stiles accepts a hug from her, lingering a second or two longer than usual, but that's okay. It's all okay.

He's got Loppy with him, doesn't care right now who sees him.

Derek's trailing a couple of steps behind him, and he feels that shadow of the darkness around his heart when he opens the door to his father's room. Scott's there, eyes plaintive as he says he  _tried, god I did, Stiles._

Stiles says nothing, but still manages to get it across:  _It's okay._

He feels the weariness cloaking the entire room, and his father's sleeping. He moves to sit by him, still holding onto the bunny. It's several minutes later that he swallows hard and places Loppy with his dad. He needs him more.

Stiles just glad that he's alive.

He's got something to hold onto.


End file.
